Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/31

Rh necklace by which she laid great store. But wasn't there such a thing as telepathy? Isn't it supposed by some people that fortune-tellers simply see into the minds of those who come to them, and then arrange what they see there according to their fancy?

That, of course, would entirely account for all that the fortune-teller had said about her pearls.

Sylvia always felt a little uncomfortable when her pearls were not lying round her pretty neck. The first time she had left them in the hotel bureau, at her new friend's request, was when they had been together to some place of amusement at night, and she had felt quite miserable, quite lost without them. She had even caught herself wondering whether M. Girard was perfectly honest, whether she could trust him not to have her dear pearls changed by some clever jeweller, though, to be sure, she felt she would have known her string of pearls anywhere!

But what was this that was going on between the other two?

Madame Cagliostra dealt out the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate fashion—and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed the cards all together, hurriedly.

Getting up from the table, she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can tell you nothing—nothing at all! I feel ill—very ill!" and, indeed, she had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale.

For some moments the soothsayer stood staring into Anna Wolsky's astonished face.

"I know I've disappointed you, Mesdames, but I hope